FOOTPRINTS OF BLACK ANNAPOLIS, 2/21/25

A summary of CAR's action at City of Annapolis City Hall on 9/9/24. 

Video link here. (CAR speakers begin at 40 minute mark & elected officials' responses at 2 hr 23 minutes)

Calling all Old Fourth Ward residents, business owners and their descendants!

“Annapolis has its own history of doing damage to Black Americans. It was a slave port, and after slavery, it marginalized its Black residents politically and economically. The word “grandfathering” originates in an early 20th-century city law that limited voting by Black men — women couldn’t vote yet — to those who could prove their grandparents had been free.

Starting in the 1960s, city officials passed policies aimed at breaking up historic Black neighborhoods as part of urban renewal efforts that created much of the modern state government complex, a federal investigation found. Today, the city is mired in lawsuits claiming it failed to inspect public housing apartment complexes whose residents are largely Black, allowing health and safety standards to lapse.”

(Alderwoman) “Tierney said she sponsored the bill as a “first step in atonement” for forcibly removing dozens of families from their homes, a move the city has never fully recovered from.” 

“Alderman DaJuan Gay, D-Ward 6, was the lone council member to vote no on the measure, which he called “lip service.” There should have been additional steps accompanying the repeal, Gay said, such as contributing funds to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust fund to help the displaced residents get out of public housing. “There are things that could be done starting with demolishing that garage and giving that land back to the individual families that they robbed it from,” he said.”

>> “Tierney said a formal apology could come in a separate resolution.” 

It never did.